Ruin
by Levity Lirum
Summary: Starts in the Third Shinobi World War. An Uchiha OC survives when she dies in pretty much every other universe. This is how a not-quite-stable kunoichi affects the world without meaning to. No pairings yet, if ever.


**Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to Naruto or Darksiders.**

Random daydream that translated well into a story. Let us know what you think. Has some aspects of Darksiders and I've shamelessly drafted Ruin into this cause he's cool.

* * *

><p>She remembers the sand...<p>

She remembers the heat...

She remembers the blood...

She remembers the Horse...

* * *

><p>Uchiha Suzu was a vague, mediocre genin at eleven, not expected to get further than chunin. Her parents weren't expecting to be able to marry her off well like her civilian sisters.<p>

There were some who wondered why she became a ninja at all.

Suzu was considered almost completely 'plain' by Uchiha standards, with no good points or bad points; less than a wallflower. She took no pride or care for her appearance beyond basic hygiene.

Her hair was vaguely oily, lank and messy, hiding the top half of her face. Her skin alternated between dry and oily, causing acne and chapped lips. Her nails were chewed ragged.

She lived in a dream world, sometimes having mild difficulty initially separating imagination from reality.

With the Third Shinobi War in full swing, her parents, both ninja retired because of injuries, were pretty much expecting Suzu to come home in a body scroll.

As a mediocre kunoichi, it came as a surprise when the girl was the only member of her genin squad to truly survive against such odds.

* * *

><p>It took Suzu nearly a three minutes to realise that the daydream Suna-nin she was tearing through like snot through Kleenex were not actually daydreams.<p>

The split-second hesitation that came with the realisation cost her as a wind jutsu clipped her left side, shaving off the skin and surface muscle from just below the ribs to just above her knee.

Whether it was good or bad, she could never really decide, but the nerve-endings were nearly completely removed and cauterised by the jutsu and the burning hot sand kicked up by a fire jutsu from one of her team mates. The lack of pain from the violent injury reassured the girl that the massacre was, indeed, a daydream.

In pretty much every other universe, the trajectory of her team mate's fire jutsu was slightly off, the fire less hot, and the pain of the wound crippled the girl, leading to not only her death, but the rest of her team as well. And that led to one of the most crippling strikes form Sunagakure against Konohagakure, killing twenty-seven jounin, thirteen chunin and eighteen genin. The number of ANBU lost was never released, but it was in double digits.

And so, instead of the whole team dying, only the jonin, Yuuhi Sagato, and one of the genin cell, Akimichi Choumaru, fell.

Suna lost seven chunin and a jonin, five of them to Suzu. One more jonin escaped, resulting in Suzu receiving a B Class rank in the bingo book.

It was as she was standing in the aftermath of the skirmish, looking over the churned sand stained with blood, bodies and scorched glass, a light hot breeze picking up, that she saw the Horse watching through the heat-haze placidly.

Even having only seen a handful of horses in her life, and most of them cart nags, she could tell that this Horse was a Beast of War.

He stood perhaps 7ft at the densely muscled shoulder, thickly muscled neck arched so he looked like he was going to charge. His body was deep-chested and carried by four powerful legs, literally rippling with muscle under his dull, scarred, ash-black coat.

The Horse was regarding Suzu as she stood amongst the carnage, glowing yellow eyes peering at her from a powerfully shaped head, literally flaming nostrils flaring. His large fiery hooves shifted and began plodding towards her, mane and tail fluttering like smoke.

Suzu raised her hand and set it against his muzzle, just above the halter.

He was like sun-heated rock, just this side of burning.

"And what is your name, handsome fellow?" She smiled. The Horse watched quietly. "Not Carnage or Smoke, but something close. Not Bedlam. No, no, too young for Bedlam, but still following War, but not quite as far as Famine." Suzu thought for a moment, then broke out in a beaming grin. "I know now! You're Ruin!"

Ruin tossed his heavy head back and trumpeted his agreement.

* * *

><p>Suzu woke several days later in the Konohagakure Hospital.<p>

She had made quite a spectacle when the Horse, Ruin, had raced to the North Gate with the unconscious Uchiha and barely-surviving team mate, civvie-born Yukimura Kazuma, astride his broad back, the dead in the black body scroll she had pilfered from her dying sensei. As soon as the two children had been removed, the Horse had surged forward and into the ground, leaving a large patch of charcoal-dust.

It was more than a year later that she realised the repercussions of granting her sensei a merciful death, knowing that stomach and gut wounds were a truly horrific way to die. And Sagato-sensei had been more of a father to her than Uchiha Sasa had ever been.

It was merely assumed by the clan that Uchiha Suzu had a mutated Sharingan, rather than the Mangekyou Sharingan. After all, while it was a pride to the clan when a man made the third level of the Sharingan, for a woman it was an embarrassment. To achieve Mangekyou within minutes of _awakening_ the Sharingan was unheard of since before the founding of the Hidden Villages.

Granted, after her psyche-evaluation, Suzu wasn't allowed out of the village for nearly six months while she attended counselling sessions with an elderly Yamanaka. Kazuma was removed from active duty and sent into administration.

* * *

><p>Suzu was still village-bound when the walls were breached.<p>

Even knowing that it was real, Suzu was also aware that when she had thought she was daydreaming, she had been a great shinobi. Her confidence had shot through the roof, allowing her to throw herself into fights and spars with abandon, to win spars against her chunin cousins and some of the jounin. Her fighting style was wild, almost uncoordinated and unpredictable, making it difficult for anyone, even third-level Sharingan wielding taijutsu specialists, to predict.

But she wasn't promoted from genin because of her 'mental instability'.

Still, her standing in the clan had risen.

And so she was on the field when enemy ninja broke through the walls somehow.

The fighting went for hours, sending Suzu all over the place as the pockets of resistance she joined against were wiped out.

It was as she was racing to the aid of yet another group she almost missed the small dark-haired child wandering the field.

Knowing she couldn't just leave it, she shifted direction and swooped the child up without breaking stride, its face pressed into her neck.

Releasing a breathy, drawn-out "Haaaaaah..." as she leapt into space, Suzu Summoned Ruin to the field, landing in the saddle without breaking stride, the child clutching her and crying softly into her shoulder.

Ruin made short work of the distance to the next sector where she passed the small child to a medic-nin.

In other worlds, sometimes Uchiha Itachi was killed by various enemy nin when he went in another direction. In most, his father found him hours later after his son had wandered through some of the worse death-infested fields, his Sharingan active. It damaged him beyond repair.

In this world, while Itachi's Sharingan was active, he'd only seen two nasty skirmishes and several dead ninja of both sides. And he never forgot the first time he saw Uchiha Suzu, hair matted and face smeared with blood, sweat, dirt and soot, Sharingan more a darker garnet then the bloody crimson the Uchiha were known for, and three turning sickles composed of intricate vines spinning where tomoe should have been. With his Sharingan, he saw the bloody tear-tracks down her cheeks, though he wouldn't find out what this meant until he was nearly ten.

Nothing, not even the memory of Sasuke's first smile at him, could ever take the place of that girl, that Ninja Kami, coming out of the dangerous world to scoop him up in the safety of her arms and ride away with him to safety on the back of a great Summon Horse.

And Suzu threw herself back into the battle, receiving a field-promotion in the confusion to Special Jounin.

Her rank went up to Upper Class-A in the Bingo book, despite her only being twelve. Her new height, girth, low smoke-affected husky voice and the grime covering her face made her appear older. Had the ANBU Commander who promoted her known her age, he would probably have passed her over.

But at the end, she had it. Both their names were on the paperwork, which had been properly filed, and everything went through in the confusion. Without solid reason, no matter how the Council of Elders would huff and puff, her promotion could not be revoked given her services during the battle and the glowing reports of the team put under her during her field promotion.

Ruin enjoyed himself during the battle, bringing with him a pair of long heavy swords Suzu was barely able to wield to lop the heads off the enemy as they thundered past.

* * *

><p>The War ended.<p>

Suzu went into ANBU under ANBU Commander Kirin, the Commander who had given her her field promotion. Her mask was a plain humanoid one with a garnet line curving from below the right eye, up in a three-quarter circle and ending just below the left eye, another like bisecting the semi-circle through the middle on the forehead. She took on the code-name Ashes.

She was quickly identified all across the Elemental Countries by Ruin, but because she kept her hair over her eyes and her name had not been connected with her portrait in the Bingo Book, few people realised she was an Uchiha.

* * *

><p>Reviews are welcome.<p> 


End file.
